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Psalm 34:8; “Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.”

I was asked to speak to a group of budding worship-leaders once. As I looked around at this group of people mostly in their 20’s and, sadly, mostly male, my initial question was “are you ‘prepared and ready’? A young man holding an acoustic guitar in his lap caught my eye so I posed the question again, this time directly to him; “Are you prepared and ready”? Immediately the group responded; “He’s the best guitarist and vocalist among us, knows all the songs, so he is cut-out to be a worship-leader!”

Of course the response isn’t what makes a worship-leader although many, if not most leaders in churches continue to make this mistake time and time again. Psalm 34:8. Think of David’s life of worship. It “was rooted in his experience of God and because of those experiences he was able to lead the people of Israel into a greater understanding of who God is. In the same way, we as worship leaders must come to know God intimately if we are to lead other people into experiences of deep, meaningful worship where they too can come to a greater understanding of God’ s presence in their lives. Again, we can’ t lead people into this experience with God unless we go there ourselves” (Peter Engle).

So as we progress here it takes far more than just being able to play an instrument and sing well to be in worship-leadership. In fact, if we be honest, if that’s all you bring the result will be entertainment and a performance and very little else. For us to be in worship-leadership will require an intimate relationship with Jesus, and God working His character into our hearts. Character and character-development is an integral part of leading God’s people into a place of intimacy with Him. As with people like David and many others who God called to leadership, with this principle of character development and intimate relationship with Him, were able to minister out of the deep working of the Holy Spirit in their hearts. We will deal with the Spiritual Formation of the worship-leader on Monday!